The present invention relates to a nut gatherer. More specifically, the present invention relates to a nut gatherer that is configured to collect and transport nuts that have been dispersed at the end of a nut windrow.
As with any crop, nuts must be harvested from the field once they have become ripe. After the nuts haven fallen or are shaken off of trees, the nut farmer gathers the produce into a single row called a windrow for more efficient collection. While there are current devices in the prior art that are designed to create this windrow, many of these devices have difficulty in arranging the ends of the windrow due to certain design constraints. One such limitation is that many of the tools designed to shape a nut windrow are mounted onto a vehicle and can only be used in a single direction. If used in the opposite direction, the wheels of the vehicle will overrun and crush the produce. The present solution to this problem is either to manually rake the nuts or use a blower to move the nuts at the ends of the fields back toward the windrow. This is both time consuming and an expensive use of a farmer's resources.
While traditional tractors are designed to move and arrange large objects such as bales, they lack the ability to control large amounts of smaller items, such as nuts that are often gathered in a windrow. Certain tractor attachments exist in the prior art to address this issue, but many require complicated mechanisms, such as winnowing devices and hydraulic devices, which are expensive to both produce and upkeep.